Agustine and Boethius try to explain and interpret the role and divine power of God, his impact on human life, and his understanding of human nature. Agustine and Boethius try to prove the existence of God using concepts and ideas dominated in Medieval philosophy and based on the Medieval world views. They agree that the man is one who brings his troubles and resentments without hesitation before the Lord. He is as far as possible removed from the conventional picture of the pious person who would never think of questioning God.
Augustine declares that God’s providence remains in control of the nations even when they refuse to acknowledge him. The true reason for the long success of Rome was not that Jove had helped it; it was that God had ordained that it should be so. Consequently, Augustine goes to great lengths to refute the contemporary theories that fate rules the destinies of the nations. Against those Greek views which saw history going around in circles and repeating itself, Augustine asserts that history, under God, has a purpose and a goal. Among the nations of the world, God chose the Jewish nation that within it there might be built the City of God. There were other individuals, among the other nations, who also belonged to the heavenly city, just as some Jewish individuals failed to belong to it. No other people were chosen as a group. Finally, in the one man Jesus Christ, God himself appeared to make manifest the purpose and meaning of the whole of history. Jesus founded the Church, which was henceforth to embody the City of God upon the earth. Thus, in the time of his writing, Augustine found that the City of God was represented by the Church, while the City of the World was represented by the Roman Empire (Furley, p. 43). “Now this ruin they do not impute to their own gods, though they impute to our Christ the evils of this life, which cannot ruin good men” (Agustine, p. 69).
The Church was not identical to the City of God. Not all members of the Catholic Church were members of the celestial city. In fact, not all members could ever hope for salvation. On the other hand, while the Roman Empire was essentially evil, it did perform certain real services for the Church in its maintenance of a certain amount of peace and concord. Although its reasons for seeking this peace were purely prudential and selfish, and rather like those that led to honor among thieves, the Church could still profit from it to spread its gospel. As a result, the Christian must pray for the state, fight for it when its wars were just, and accept positions of authority within it. This is possible because, so long as this world exists, there will be an overlapping of interest between the two cities in the orderly maintenance of mortal life. This harmony, however, cannot be complete, for the laws of religion will not be the same for both cities. At this point, the heavenly city will have to dissent from the state, and it both has suffered and will suffer for doing so (Furley, p. 73).
The fall of the Roman Empire was not, insists Augustine, due to its betrayal of its national gods. It was due rather to the nature of all states which bear within themselves the seeds of destruction. The Roman people were bound together as a people by their love of common objectives. As time passed, these objectives became less and less ideal. Self-love became more excessive and imperialistic. The people rose up against one another in civil strife and thus was broken the concord which is the minimum necessary to hold together an earthly state. Rome fell because of her sin, not because of disaffection from her gods. Augustine denied the view which people know as premillennial. This view is based upon a literal reading of the book of Revelation and holds that the Devil is to be chained for a thousand years after the coming of Christ, during which time there will be perfect peace upon the earth for the saints, who will reign with God (Furley 77). At the close of the thousand years, the Devil will be loosed, and there will follow the cataclysmic battle between Christ and the Antichrist when even the saints will be sorely tried and some will fall. Finally, after his victory, Christ will judge the living and the resurrected dead; the present earth will be transmuted into the heavenly kingdom of eternity. Augustine comments that although he had once held this view, he came to see it as too materialistic and based upon a faulty reading of the Scriptures (Furley, p. 61).
In contrast to Boethius, Augustine insists that the “first resurrection” is not the resurrection preceding the thousand years of the millennium, but rather it is the resurrection of the soul that has been dead in sin and trespasses. Consequently, the first resurrection occurred with the coming of Christ. The “thousand years” began with Christ and is not to be taken literally as meaning a thousand years, but “thousand” is the perfect number and is symbolic of the perfect nature of God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God has thus come and is present in the Church despite the fact that the Church is to be purified, at the Final Judgment, of the tares that now grow within it. When the Last Judgment comes and the second resurrection occurs, history will be ended, and the righteous will be transmuted to heaven to enjoy the perfect piece of fellowship with God, while the unrighteous will be condemned for eternity. In short, the final stage of history is present, and man cannot hope for a perfect earthly society in the future (Furley, p. 65). Augustine finds meaning in the whole of history. This meaning is dependent upon the goal toward which history is moving, a goal that lies outside history. In fact, Augustine takes pains to point out the absurdity and hopelessness of those who would find the meaning and purpose of history within history, or within this earthly life. On the other hand, the goal is the fulfillment of history and does not simply deny it. Within history are fought the battles between good and evil; within history, man makes his choice as to which city he shall join. The goal is thus more than history, but it includes history and does not ignore it (Green, p. 55).
Boethius sees the fateful boundaries of human life as a truly compelling man but never as coercing God. They constitute real barriers against undue self-confidence on our part; they keep us in our proper place before God; they even help us to rely on him more and more completely (Boethius, p. 33). Thus people cannot believe that what is fateful is as compulsive for God as it is for us. How can it be so if it is actually the means by which God enlists and strengthens our faith in him? And so the persuasion grows that our very barriers are God’s frontiers through which he comes righteously and graciously to bring his saving power to our aid (Green, p. 43). Boethius underlines that people cannot see the fatalities of our existence as they must appear to God; and yet it is our Christian duty to meet and understand these things by faith in him to whom they are neither final nor irrevocable. People are bound to declare that fate is no real substitute for an absent, silent God, but rather a blasphemous parody of him. Let us be very clear that fatalism is at the bottom of nihilism; it comes down to that (Green, p. 68). Yet for this reason, it raises in a most acute and unavoidable way the whole question about Providence. That is why it cannot be shrugged off as “atheism” and henceforth dismissed. True, the proponents of this point of view press its claims boldly, at times with an exaggerated theatricality, but always too with an unbearable lucidity. Moreover, they are not content simply to describe the vacuum where God used to be; as has been said, having abandoned God, they are now trying to imitate him by creating a world out of nothing (Green, p. 31).
The message of Providence can scarcely come into this situation genially and blandly. It is not to be administered like a pat on the back or whistled like a cheery tune in the dark. Only as people have learned to take the full, exhausting measure of the worst, have people the right to say the providential best about our human destiny. But we must not on this account hesitate or temporize, for this great message is both opportune and pertinent. More than fourteen hundred years ago from a prison cell in Pavia, Boethius set forth with eloquent clarity the true relation between Providence and what men call fate. Let us now dive deeper into the heart of the issue between fatalism and the Christian view of Providence (Green, p. 54). Perhaps what has already been said can be summed up in this way: people must accept fatality, or the fateful, as the limited, encroaching condition of our existence, but not fatalism as the true understanding of our destiny. “God‘s power unharmed and still untouched, you will hardly be able to talk about misfortune with any justice” (Boethius, p. 29). Exactly what this means will grow clearer if people allow thinking to be guided by two verses from the apostle Paul which form indeed the biblical basis of this great doctrine. Yet it is the Christian faith that catches up and savingly transforms this generally felt connection between sin, death, and guilt. Since death must always mean for us the cross of Christ, it can be borne, accepted, even gloried in, as belonging within the mysterious economy of God. Faith does not overleap or circumvent death but sees right through it and beyond it to an austerely loving Providence (Green, p. 92).
For a thousand years or more Augustine was the reigning influence in the Christian interpretation of history. His theory of the two cities was the doctrinal basis for the relentless battle of the Middle Ages between secular rulers and the pope. The degree to which Augustine had identified the Church with the kingdom of God was used by the popes as the basis of their claims to supremacy over secular rulers (Green, p. 43). “Beyond the sphere of Satum lay the sphere of the fixed stars, and beyond that, the Pnmum Mobile, which is caused by God to rotate on its own axis once in every twenty-four hours” (Boethius, p. 61), At the same time, the sharp distinction that Augustine had made between membership in the visible Church and membership in the City of God or invisible Church, were neglected or forgotten. It became increasingly difficult for the Church to see itself under the judgment of God. Rather it felt that it was expressing the judgment of God upon the states of this world. Where Augustine had little hope that the two cities could co-operate on laws concerning religion, the Church increasingly sought to have the state enforce its religious laws, including religious orthodoxy (Green, p. 77).
It is possible that no large-scale imposition was ever intended, and that the writer adopted, as a literary device, to suit his principal theme, the name of one who had worshipped the Unknown God, in Whom we live and move and have our being, and had added, as corroborative literary detail, a few topical references to his exposition of theology. However that may be, the unknown writer not only concealed his identity very effectually from posterity, but also ensured for his writings, for more than a thousand years, respect and an authority which they would certainly not otherwise have acquired, and in consequence, through a misapprehension without parallel in either sacred or profane literature, much of his teaching has become embedded in the theological tradition of the West (Helm, p. 87). Right here lies the greatest obstacle to belief in Providence for many in the modern-day, and it must be faced. This crushing sense of human insignificance is not of course a new thing, but today it has a quite unheard-of range and force. The folk of this generation around the world has seen the systematic collectivizing and vicious brutalizing of men on a scale far greater than ever before; they have not only endured but participated in ghastly horrors and demonic actions without number (Helm, p. 87).
In sum, Boethius and Augustine underline that recognition of God in the midst of apparent fate is really a mutual recognition in which God takes cognizance of us and refuses to allow us to become totally estranged from him. There at the barricades of destiny God notices and responds to us, challenging and correcting our little faith in him. So true is this that even our distrust of God is seen to be the result of a reluctance to accept life at his hands and on his terms. If people complain of God, people must do their complaining to him; and our complaint is really a confession that people do not trust him to be God or make faithful response to him just where he is trying to break through to us. On this point Kierkegaard has written with customary discernment: This truth, that God encourages us to complain to him because he is fully able to justify himself, is a part of the Christian teaching about Providence which must not be overlooked. Yet surely the providential principle is beginning to emerge already. It is that the same things which hide God possess also the mysterious faculty of disclosing him, so that people are able to discover Providence in just those situations from which all hope or help seems ruthlessly excluded.
Works Cited
- Augustibe of Hippo. City of God. Penguin Classics, 2003.
- Boethius, A. The Consolation of Philosophy: Revised Edition (Penguin. Penguin Classics, 1999.
- Furley, D. From Aristotle to Augustine. Routledge, 1999.
- Green, R. H. The Consolation of Philosophy: Boethius. Prentice Hall, 1962.
- Helm, P. Eternal God: A Study of God without Time. Clarendon Press, 1997.